Shirtless in Stowe
by augiesannie
Summary: Their new life in America proves difficult for Maria and Georg. Will things ever be the same? Written for mie779 to celebrate the Proboards story exchange.


**SHIRTLESS IN STOWE**

 **oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo**

"For heaven's sake, Georg, put a shirt on, would you?"

From across the room, he tried to send his best suggestive smirk her way. "Am I distracting you, Maria?"

"I could use some distraction," she offered hopefully, laughing. She tried to hold his gaze, but he just winked and began to rummage through a bureau drawer.

He'd come upstairs to change his clothes after several hours work in the barn, to find her sitting by their bedroom window in the rocking chair, working her way through an enormous pile of mending. She looked beautiful. The early summer sun streaming through the window turned her hair to gold, and her smile was as wide and genuine as it had been the day they'd met.

Still, he couldn't help feeling concerned about her. It was only natural, after everything he'd put her through. She'd been quieter than usual lately, and he worried that she had never really recovered her strength after last year: the arduous escape to America, settling on the farm, and the difficult birth of their son, Johannes. Georg had not been present at the birth of his seven older children, and witnessing Johannes' arrival had shaken him, considerably.

Was it his imagination, or was her face paler and thinner than usual?

"You've been working far too hard lately, Maria. The farm, the children."

"You're working just as hard, Georg, and you know it. Another year or two and things will get easier. Meanwhile, I do appreciate the view," she looked up at him, her blue gaze burning through thick eyelashes, and he smiled to see some color rise in her cheeks, "but I don't want you to catch one of those awful summer colds. Please put a shirt on!"

Even as she admonished him, her eyes lingered hungrily on his body, lean, muscular and tanned from hours of farm work. She'd die before complaining, or doing anything to add to the burdens he shouldered on his family's behalf, but secretly, Maria regretted the lack of time or opportunity for romance lately. There was only the occasional hushed and hasty encounter late at night if the baby cooperated and they weren't too impossibly exhausted. Encounters that were only pale echoes of the passion that had blazed between them in the first days of their marriage.

"Since when are you so modest, Fraulein?" he teased.

"Not modest, just practical. If you get sick, I'll have the farm work to do too." she said.

He sighed inwardly and composed a smile onto his face. He didn't want to pressure her – their predicament was largely his fault, after all – but he also didn't want her to forget the way it had been between them on their honeymoon, before their long ordeal began. The truth was, he missed those days terribly.

"Well, if you want to be practical, then there _is_ the fact that I have no clean shirts left," Georg said. He didn't mention that he couldn't find clean pajamas, either; he hadn't wanted to complain, or burden her with another domestic detail. A bubble of irritation formed in his chest. Five daughters; how was it that his wife was left to bear so much of the load?

"I'm sorry," she said wearily. "Ten people in this house, one in diapers …. It's hard to keep up."

"Never mind, love," he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. Yesterday's shirt will do fine." He buttoned himself into the wrinkled blue shirt – in fact, he'd already worn it two days running – and went in search of his daughters.

When Georg strode into the kitchen, full of indignant purpose, however, the sight brought him up short. Liesl stood at the stove, frying meat patties just as quickly as Marta could form them. Brigitta hovered over Johannes in his high chair, overseeing the boy's first messy attempts to feed himself. Louisa was up to her elbows in bread dough. Gretl was slicing carrots. Out the window, he could see Friedrich swinging the axe, making short work of the tree they'd brought down yesterday. Kurt, he knew, was out on his paper route.

They certainly all _looked_ busy.

He cleared his throat. "Girls. If it's not too much trouble…"

Brigitta looked up and smiled, her face bright. "Not for you, Father. Can I get you something?"

"A clean shirt, darling. I hate to trouble any of you." Feeling guilty for having misjudged them, he added, "How hard you're all working. One would hardly recognize those pampered aristocratic children who sang for my guests not two years ago."

Liesl laughed. "One would hardly recognize the aristocrat, either."

"We banished Mother upstairs for the day," Louisa broke in. "So she can take it easy."

"I see. I hate to tell you this, Louisa, but she's up there mending," he said.

"She's got to get some rest or she'll make herself sick," Louisa said, and though she sounded annoyed, he didn't miss the shadow that crossed her face. He watched as the girl washed the bread dough off of her hands and went upstairs to check on her mother.

"Father, I can't leave the stove right now," Liesl told him. "But Gretl can find you a shirt. She's in charge of the laundry, you know."

Impressed, he followed his youngest daughter down the stairs into the cellar. There, amidst jars of preserved foods and sacks of potatoes and onions, was their makeshift laundry. A primitive wringer, deep tubs, an ironing table, baskets.

"You do the laundry?" he asked Gretl. She was barely taller than the ironing table.

"Not exactly. Liesl is just being nice. The boys have to turn the wringer, and Louisa is the only one besides Mother who can iron without burning herself. And I'm not tall enough to hang things outside, so Liesl does that if Mother is busy with the baby. But I collect it all, and sort it, and fold it and put it away, and Mother says that matters most, because it's the part no one likes to do," she said importantly.

In all of the chaos of acquiring and managing a farm, he had left the household for Maria to worry about, taking for granted how hard his children had been working. He watched Gretl pick up a scrap of material from the floor and toss it into a basket under the table.

"What's that?"

"The rag bag, Mother calls it, though it's a basket. Where we throw things that are too stained or torn to use. Things we've outgrown that can't be worn again. Mother uses the rags for cleaning, or to stuff pillows. She says someday we'll make a quilt. Anyway, Father," and Gretl handed him a neatly folded pile, "here are some clean shirts for you."

"Thank you darling." He stepped back, letting his daughter scamper upstairs ahead of him, when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of something red, half-escaping from the rag bag. There was something familiar about that particular shade of red. He reached under the table and tugged hard, until he found himself holding the sleeve of his red pajamas. They'd been brand new last Christmas and weren't the least bit worn, torn or stained. So why….?

He left the pajamas behind and climbed the stairs, but he thought about them over dinner and well into the evening. There _might_ be another explanation, he thought, a smile flickering across his face, but there was only one way to find out.

Bedtime comes early on the farm. It was barely nine o'clock when he slipped into their darkened room and threw open the window before sliding into bed beside her. He whispered, "Maria. The nights are still chilly. Would you rather have the window closed?"

"No," she shivered. "It's cold, but it's nice for a change. I like the fresh air, and the sound of the wind in the trees. It reminds me of home. Will you keep me warm?" And then just as he'd hoped, she wriggled up against him. He had barely taken her in his arms when she sprang away.

"Georg! You're not – you don't have any – what are you wearing?"

"Not wearing, you mean," he said calmly. "Don't you remember what I told you on our honeymoon? Sailors always sleep this way. Storage space aboard ship is very limited. I had room only for a few family pictures and a change of uniform."

Maria laughed. "If you'd had fewer children, you'd have had fewer pictures, and more room for pajamas."

"But if I'd had fewer children, I wouldn't have met you," he said, his throat suddenly and inexplicably tight. After a moment, he recovered his composure enough to say, "In any event, my pajamas seem to have vanished into the domestic chaos that is our household."

"I'll look for them tomorrow," she yawned. "I promise."

"Oh, no, you won't, Maria. Because you already know where they are, don't you?"

She smiled to herself, a secret smile in the dark. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You hid them. My pajamas. You hid them so that I would have to…"

"I did no such thing," she huffed, but her voice was threaded with amusement. She rolled away from him, but he easily caught her by the shoulders and hauled her back into his arms.

"You are incapable of lying to me, Maria, and you know it. Do I need to turn the light on to see it on your face, or will you own up to it?"

She couldn't hold back her laughter anymore. "All right, all right, Captain. Guilty as charged."

"But why?"

She tried to compose the kind of answer she'd have given as a carefree bride, something light and flirtatious, but Maria was still the same outspoken young woman she'd been the day they met. "Because," she blurted, "I'm tired of going to bed at nine every night, like a farmer's wife…"

"You _are_ a farmer's wife," he pointed out, unsteadily. "And I'm sorry for that-" but she interrupted him, the words pouring out of her because they'd been dammed up for so long.

"Next to a man in sensible flannel nightclothes. I want what we had in Paris. I want _us_ , wrapped together skin to skin, staying up all night because we can't get enough of each other. I want passion. I want everyone to stop treating me like I'm some kind of fragile creature. I _hate_ it! It _was_ hard having the baby, and then there are seven other children, and working so hard, and I'm tired, but I want to feel like there's a reason for it, like it's worth it…" her voice broke and she was quiet before adding, in a small voice, "like you still want me."

"Still _want_ you? Are you mad? I want you more than ever, Maria. You are _everything_ to me, if I haven't made that clear. I didn't think it was possible for me to love you more than I did when we were in Paris, but I do. I do! I just can't bear thinking about it, how easy I wanted to make your life, and instead I have landed you here in the middle of this mess." Georg sputtered into silence.

The air felt heavy between them. She took her hand in his and squeezed gently.

"You have nothing to apologize for. I'm proud of the choice you made, Georg, deciding to leave Austria. It took courage and honor. I can't imagine your having done anything different! And the way you've taken care of all of us. Never thinking of yourself."

"But I took you away from everything you knew and loved," he mumbled, tightening his arms around her and burying his face in her soft hair.

"I have everything I love right here in this house in America," Maria argued. "And anyway, how, exactly, am I worse off? Five years ago, I was a mountain girl working on a farm. Now I'm a mountain girl working on a farm with a brave, noble and handsome husband and eight children. Yes, I lived in a fairy tale for a few months, first as your governess and then your bride. I'll never forget it, but I wasn't really made for that life, and we both knew it. I feel badly for you, and the children, more than anything else. I was born into poverty. So was Johannes, come to think of it. He and I, we'll do just fine," she finished with a giggle.

"But Maria, darling," he said gravely, "You've been unhappy. Don't deny it."

She was quiet for so long he wondered if she'd drifted off to sleep, but then she said, in that small, hesitant voice once more, "I just miss the way it was. In Paris. Do you think it will ever be that way again?"

Georg didn't know whether to laugh or weep.

"Do you mean to tell me – oh, God, I had it all wrong, didn't I? I thought you were working too hard, and homesick, and not quite recovered after Johannes. I thought you were so fragile, pining for everything I'd taken from you, that I started to treat you exactly – exactly wrong. You don't want pity, or to take it easy. You want-"

He halted abruptly, as though seized by inspiration, and then he made an announcement. "You want a good tumble. With me. Maria von Trapp, we are going away. Tomorrow. All day, and overnight. Just the two of us."

"And where are we going to go, without a dime in our pockets?" she asked, but she felt her spirits lift gently at first and then soar, at the very idea of getting away, alone, with her Captain.

"Camping. I'm taking you camping."

"But the baby!"

"Is not a baby. You've weaned him. The girls can manage just fine with him, and the boys can do my chores. I'm taking you deep into the woods, Fraulein. With a tent, a pile of blankets against the chill, and a bottle of cheap wine. And a guitar, for atmosphere. I'm going to get you tiddly and then do unspeakable things to you."

"But the evenings are still cold!" Maria pretended to object. The game came back to her, the flirting and wiles that would help build the delicious tension between them. Deep within, she felt something stir.

"I'll keep you warm," he promised, and even in the darkness, she could see the smirk on his face. "We're leaving first thing in the morning."

"In the morning? But there won't be time to pack!"

"For what we are going to do, you don't have to pack much. Anything at all, really."

"I haven't been camping in years, Georg. Since before I was a postulant," she mused. "Perhaps …"

"Perhaps what, darling?"

"Perhaps we ought to practice?"

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo**

 **I wrote this story for the Proboards holiday gift exchange, and especially for mie779, with best wishes for a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year with her newly-expanded family. Mie has written some great TSOM fanfic, and she's also been so much fun over at Proboards, where she was a founding member (the fourth!). Hope you enjoy your gift, mie779! I own nothing about TSOM.**


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